Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
LANGSTON
Emotions flash across Aven’s face like lightning in a summer storm, shock widening her eyes, fury tightening her jaw, and something else, something dangerously close to hope, before she shuttered it away behind a mask of composed disbelief.
Her gaze cut from me to Jasmine and back again, mouth opening and closing twice before she found her voice, though it came out strangled and higher than usual.
“Excuse me,” she managed, already sliding out of the booth.
I caught the flash of panic on her face. She didn’t look at me as she stood, smoothing her navy skirt.
“Take your time. I’ll be right here,” I said, my voice calmer than the hurricane raging in my chest.
Jasmine waited until Aven disappeared around the corner before letting out a low whistle. “Well, that was certainly dramatic. Congratulations seem to be in order, though your fiancée doesn’t appear to have gotten the memo,” she said, with her perfectly manicured fingers tapping against her tablet.
“We’re still working out the details,” I replied, straightening my tie for something to do with my hands. Keeping them busy meant I wouldn’t reach across the table and snatch the smug look off Jasmine’s face.
“Details like whether she wants to marry you? Or details like whether she knows you well enough to tie her future to yours after what? A couple of months back in town?” Jasmine’s eyebrow arched perfectly, skepticism dripping from every syllable.
I forced a smile, though it was more like baring my teeth. “Seems like you’ve got a lot of opinions about my personal life, Torres.”
“Professional concern. I make it a point to learn what I’m walking into, and this… wasn’t on my research brief.” She gestured to the water pooled on the table from Aven’s spilled glass.
“Your research brief? Let me guess. Your daddy sent you to poach my newest employee because he thinks it’ll give him leverage over my client list. Am I warm?” I let out a humorless laugh.
A flash of irritation, maybe respect, crossed her face before she masked it. “You think this is about you? Aven Compton has an impressive résumé. The fact she’s currently working for you is incidental.”
I leaned forward, voice dropping so the nearby tables wouldn’t hear.
“Like hell it is. I’m familiar with your father’s playbook, Jasmine.
He’s been trying to undermine my business since I refused to sell to him three years ago.
Let’s not pretend this is about Aven’s talents, impressive as they are. ”
Jasmine stood, smoothing her cream suit with the kind of deliberate grace that spoke of old money and expensive finishing schools.
“Well, when your fiancée decides if she actually wants to marry you, tell her to give me a call. Our offer stands. And Langston? For what it’s worth, I think you’re making a mistake.
Mixing business and pleasure rarely ends well.
” She slid a business card across the table.
I watched her walk away. Only when she disappeared through the restaurant’s main entrance did I let my shoulders drop, exhaling a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
What the hell had I done? One moment I’d been sitting in my office, stewing over the thought of Aven interviewing with Torres, and the next I was sliding into a booth at Savoy announcing we were getting married.
I glanced at my watch, realizing Aven had been gone too long for a bathroom break. Shit.
I threw a fifty on the table to cover the untouched waters. As I exited the restaurant, I nodded at the hostess. The impending rain in the evening air hit, and dark clouds gathered like my own mounting anxiety.
“Sir, can I get your car?” the valet asked, reaching for his ticket pad.
“I’m good,” I replied, scanning the parking lot. I found Aven standing beside her blue sedan, keys in hand.
I approached carefully, not wanting to startle her, though I was sure she’d spotted me. There was a determined set to her mouth, the same expression she’d worn when she told me she was leaving for college. This town was too small to contain her dreams.
“Going somewhere?” I asked, stopping a few feet away, giving her space even as everything in me screamed to close the distance.
Her fingers trembled as she fumbled with her keys. “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I can’t go back in there,” she admitted, not looking at me.
A gust of wind swept through the lot before the approaching storm. It lifted tendrils of her hair around her face. She looked beautiful, wild, and terrified, ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.
“Aven.” I stopped, unsure what to say that wouldn’t send her running. I’d already unleashed a tsunami with a marriage announcement. One wrong word now might wash away any chance of salvaging the moment.
“What the actual fuck, Langston? Marrying you? Partner track? Have you lost your entire mind?” Aven hissed, turning to face me fully.
I didn’t flinch at her tone. “Torres has been trying to undermine my business for three years. I’m not letting him use you to do it.”
“Use me? I’m not some pawn in your corporate chess game! I’m a grown woman making a career decision!”
“A career decision which happens to involve the man who’s tried to steal my clients, poach my employees, and spread rumors about my company’s financial stability.
Did you think it was a coincidence, Aven?
Of all the companies in the state, Torres just happened to want you? ” My voice remained low but intense.
I knew the implication stung, and I hated bringing it to her attention. Yet, I believed the timing of the offer was suspicious.
“Barging in on my interview, announcing we’re engaged? In front of Jasmine Torres, of all people? Do you have any idea how humiliating that was?”
I stepped closer, moving my hands to my pockets. My control was crumbling under the possibility of losing her again.
“I wasn’t thinking. I just knew I couldn’t let you walk away again without fighting for us,” I admitted the truth was more straightforward and more painful than any excuse I could manufacture.
Her keys slipped from her fingers, clattering against the asphalt. We both stared at them for a moment. I knelt to pick up her keys and closed my fingers around them, a physical barrier between Aven and her escape route.
The storm clouds overhead mirrored the turbulence in my chest. Everything I’d built, everything I’d become, suddenly felt meaningless if it meant watching her drive away again.
“You want to leave? Fine, but you’re taking me with you. Europe, Asia, anywhere. I’ll sell the business. I can’t do another fifteen years without you.” My voice came out rougher than I intended.
Aven’s eyes widened, her lips parting in surprise. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about being done with half lives,” I said, taking another step toward her. “I’m talking about how I’ve spent years building a life that was perfect on paper but feels empty every time I walk into a home that’s too quiet, too organized, too … not you.”
The first drops of rain began to fall, fat and sporadic, landing on her shoulders and my outstretched hand still clutching her keys.
“Langston, you can’t just—”
I interrupted, my confession bursting from me like water through a cracked dam.
“I hired a PI when you were in South America, not to spy on you, to ensure you were safe, to have some confirmation you were alive, and well, when the postcards to Raina stopped coming,” I added quickly, seeing her expression darken.
Her hand flew to her mouth. “You what?”
“I understand how it sounds, but Raina was concerned when you stopped communicating. I couldn’t sit here knowing you were out there, possibly hurt or afraid, and do nothing.
I made sure someone checked in. Discreetly to confirm you were okay.
” I ran a hand over my face, rain now falling steadily, dampening my beard.
“You had no right,” she said, but there was less heat in it than I expected.
I stepped closer still, close enough to see raindrops clinging to her eyelashes like tears.
“I know it crossed a line, but you know what’s really fucked up?
I’ve kept every postcard you sent Raina in a box in my desk drawer.
Your sister thought I was crazy when she brought them to me and let me read about your adventures, your life without me. ”
Thunder rumbled in the distance, a physical manifestation of the tension crackling between us. Aven’s hair was getting wet, her curls darkening as rain plastered strands to her forehead and cheeks. Neither of us moved to find shelter.
“Why would you do that? Why would you care what I was doing after all this time?” she asked, vulnerability breaking through her anger.
“Because I’ve compared every woman I’ve ever met to the girl who loved me enough to lie for me. Because I’ve spent fifteen years trying to become someone worthy of you, only to realize the man I became is still hopelessly in love with the woman you are.” The truth tumbled out.
My voice cracked on the last words, emotion breaking through the controlled facade I’d maintained for so long. Rain streamed down my face, indistinguishable from the tears I might have shed if I were a different kind of man.
“I let you go once because I thought you deserved better than what I could offer, but I’m not that boy anymore, Aven. I’m a man who knows what he wants. And I want you. In my home, in my life, in every future I can imagine.” I closed the last distance between us, handing her keys back.
She took the keys. “That doesn’t explain the ‘marrying me’ part. Where the hell did that come from?”
Something shifted in me, my confident businessman facade cracking enough to reveal the vulnerability beneath. “Maybe I’m tired of waiting for the right moment. Maybe watching you walk out this morning, knowing you were coming here, made me realize I might lose you again.”
“Langston, you can’t just announce we’re getting married in the middle of a business meeting!”
“Why not? Fifteen years, Aven. I spent fifteen years building myself into someone worthy of you, and then you walked back into my life and upended everything. Again. I’m not waiting another fifteen years to tell you how I feel.”
“And how exactly do you feel?” Aven challenged.
I reached out, one hand cupping her cheek with a gentleness that contrasted with the intensity in her eyes.
“Like I’ve been holding my breath since the day you got on the bus, and I finally started breathing again the moment you walked into my office.
I’m not saying we have to get married tomorrow.
I’m saying I want you in my life, both professionally and personally…
permanently. And I’m done pretending otherwise,” I continued, brushing her cheekbone with my thumb.
Aven stared at me, unable to form words.
“Say something, Trouble.” The old nickname sent warmth spreading through my chest.
“Langston, this is all happening so fast—”
“It’s fifteen years overdue, so is this,” I said, reaching inside my jacket pocket. My fingers closed around the small velvet box. I’d gotten it this morning, after I saw the email from Torres and realized I might lose her again.
Her breath caught as I pulled out the box, rainwater immediately darkening the midnight blue velvet. I didn’t kneel. This wasn’t that kind of moment, wasn’t that kind of relationship. Instead, I held it between us, a physical manifestation of everything I’d been too afraid to say.
“I will marry you, Aven Compton, if it’s the last thing I do.
I’ll marry you and spend the rest of my life proving the man I’ve become is worthy of the woman you’ve always been,” I said, rain now falling in sheets around us, soaking through my suit, her blouse, plastering both our clothes to our skin.
Her eyes filled with tears mixed with raindrops as they spilled down her cheeks. “Yes, yes, Langston.” Aven’s words were nearly lost in the storm but unmistakable in the way her body swayed toward mine.
My eyes widened in surprise. “You’re saying yes? Just like that?”
A small, watery laugh escaped her. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I wasn’t asking. I didn’t want the possibility of ever being told no. Not by you. Not again,” I admitted, a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth.
I opened the box, revealing the ring I’d chosen after comparing stones and settings, a deep blue sapphire surrounded by smaller diamonds, unusual like her, brilliant like her. Not the traditional engagement ring, but Aven had never been a conventional woman.
Her fingers trembled as I slid it onto her hand, a perfect fit because I’d measured the ring she always wore on her right hand while she slept beside me the night before.
“You arrogant, presumptuous, wonderful man.” Aven smiled, looking from the ring to my face in disbelief.
Then her hands were on my face, her fingers sliding into my beard, pulling me down until our lips met with the force of fifteen years of separation collapsing into nothing.
I wrapped my arms around her waist, lifting her off her feet as the kiss deepened, both of us oblivious to the rain pouring down, to the occasional car driving past, to everything but the taste and feel of each other.
Aven threw her arms around my neck. When we broke apart, I kept her close, our foreheads touching, rain streaming down our faces. “I’m not running anymore. Not from you, not from us, not from whatever this crazy future looks like,” she confirmed, locking her eyes with mine.
“Good. Because I’d follow you anyway,” I replied, unable to stop smiling despite being soaked to the skin in a parking lot during a thunderstorm.
She laughed as I captured her mouth again, sealing our improbable engagement with a kiss, which was like coming home and setting out on the most incredible adventure of my life all at once.